Ottoman Storage Bench Fabric Pilling Velvet, Linen, and Faux Leather
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Every fabric ottoman bench eventually shows its age. The question worth asking before you buy — or before you decide a fabric has "worn out" — is how it will show that age, and whether there's an actual measurable standard behind a listing that says "hard-wearing" rather than a marketing adjective with nothing to back it up. In the UK, there is: the Martindale rub test for abrasion resistance, and a separate modified-Martindale test for pilling. Both are British and European Standards, both produce a real number or grade, and both behave differently across velvet, linen, and faux leather.
Velvet upholstery typically rates 15,000–30,000 Martindale rubs (BS EN ISO 12947) for standard grades, with premium performance velvets exceeding 50,000; it has the highest pilling tendency of the three because its dense pile exposes more loose fibre ends to friction. Linen typically rates 15,000–25,000 Martindale and has the lowest pilling tendency, since its long bast fibres shed rather than tangle into balls. Faux leather is tested to a different standard entirely (BS EN ISO 5470, for coated fabrics, not ISO 12947) and commonly exceeds 50,000–100,000; it cannot pill at all, because it has no textile fibre surface. For an everyday ottoman bench, look for a minimum of 15,000 Martindale; for a hallway or family bench, 25,000 or higher.
What's the difference between pilling and abrasion resistance?
They're two separate types of wear, tested separately, and a fabric can perform well on one and poorly on the other. Abrasion resistance is about wear-through: repeated friction gradually thins the fabric, flattens a pile, or eventually breaks yarns and opens a hole. Pilling is about surface fibres: friction works loose fibre ends free of the weave, and they tangle into small, tenacious balls sitting on top of an otherwise intact fabric. A fabric can have an excellent abrasion rating and still look tired within months because it pills badly — which is exactly why a bench fabric needs both figures, not just one "durability" claim.
This matters more for a storage bench than for most upholstery, because a bench does three different jobs a sofa doesn't: it's sat on, it's used as a footrest against socks and bare skin, and its lid is opened and closed by hand at one edge — three separate friction patterns on the same piece of fabric.
What is the Martindale rub test, and why is it the number that matters in the UK?
The Martindale test — set out in BS EN ISO 12947 — is the UK and EU standard method for rating a fabric's abrasion resistance. A circular sample is mounted on the test apparatus and rubbed against a standard wool abradant in a figure-of-eight (Lissajous) motion, under a fixed pressure of roughly 12 kPa — chosen specifically because it approximates the weight of a seated person. The machine counts cycles until the fabric shows a defined change: pilling, fraying, or a broken yarn. That cycle count is the fabric's Martindale rating.
The US uses a different test — the Wyzenbeek method, which rubs the fabric back and forth along the warp and weft with cotton duck cloth, counted in "double rubs" rather than cycles. The two methods measure abrasion in genuinely different ways and their numbers cannot be reliably converted between one another; a fabric doesn't wear the same way under a straight-line rub as it does under a rotating one. If you're comparing a UK-bought ottoman fabric against a US-sourced or dropshipped listing, check which test produced the number before assuming they're comparable — a "40,000" on one scale is not the same claim as "40,000" on the other.
What do Martindale rub counts actually mean for an ottoman bench?
Martindale results are grouped into recognised suitability bands. These bandings vary slightly between fabric houses, but the broad shape is consistent:
| Rub count | Banding | Typical suitability |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10,000 | Decorative | Cushions, throws — not intended for a seat or lid surface |
| 10,000–15,000 | Light domestic | Occasional-use furniture, e.g. a rarely-sat bedroom accent piece |
| 15,000–25,000 | General domestic | Everyday household furniture, including a typical bedroom or living-room bench |
| 25,000–30,000 | Heavy duty (domestic) | Households with heavier use — children, pets, a hallway bench used daily |
| 30,000+ | Commercial / contract | Hospitality and public settings; rarely necessary for a home bench |
For most ottoman storage benches, General Domestic (15,000+) is a sensible working minimum, and a bench that sees hallway traffic, children, or pets is worth pushing to Heavy Duty (25,000+). Very high figures — 100,000 and beyond — mainly matter for commercial specification and add little practical benefit in a home, so a high number alone shouldn't be the only thing deciding a purchase.
How is fabric pilling tested, and what does the 1–5 grade mean?
Pilling has its own standard: ISO 12945-2, the modified Martindale method. It uses the same type of apparatus as the abrasion test, but assesses a different outcome. Circular specimens are rubbed under a lighter load at set checkpoints — commonly 2,000 and then 5,000 cycles — and assessed by comparison against standard reference photographs, graded from 5 (no visible change) down to 1 (severe pilling). ISO 12945-2 is specifically recommended for upholstery and other fabrics that bear body weight in use, because the pressurised, multi-directional friction of the Martindale tester best simulates how a seat cover actually wears.
The practical takeaway: a rub count on its own doesn't tell you how a fabric will look after eighteen months of use. Two fabrics rated at an identical 25,000 Martindale can age very differently depending on their pilling grade — one might stay smooth, the other might need a fabric shaver every few weeks. Ask for both figures where they're available.
How does velvet perform for abrasion resistance and pilling?
Velvet has the widest spread of any of the three fabrics, because "velvet" covers everything from thin decorative pile to dense performance-grade weaves. Cushion-grade velvet can sit below 10,000 Martindale, ordinary upholstery-grade velvet commonly falls in the 15,000–30,000 range, and premium performance velvets — usually polyester or poly-blend pile on a tighter backing — can exceed 50,000, with some rated over 100,000. The pile construction and backing matter far more than the word "velvet" alone.
Pilling is velvet's weaker point. Its dense, cut or looped pile puts more loose fibre ends at the surface than a flat weave does, which is exactly why ISO 12945-2 singles out plush, brushed fabrics like velvet as needing this test. In practice this shows first at the seat and the front lid edge — the two highest-friction points on a bench. It's worth being clear that pilling is a different fault from pile crushing (the flattened, shiny patches that develop under sustained weight): pilling is removed with a fabric shaver, while crushing needs steam and a soft brush — see how to fix crushed velvet pile on an ottoman for that method, and cleaning spills from a velvet ottoman for stain care, which Martindale doesn't test either.
How does linen perform for abrasion resistance and pilling?
Linen's typical range is narrower and generally lower than velvet's upper end — light domestic linen blends often sit around 15,000 Martindale, and heavier-weight upholstery linens or linen unions commonly reach 25,000. It's rarely marketed at the very high figures velvet or faux leather can reach, because a flat woven bast fibre simply doesn't have the same headroom as a dense synthetic pile or a coated surface.
The counterintuitive part is pilling. Linen's long fibres are one of the more pill-resistant textile options — loose fibre ends tend to break off and brush away rather than knot into a persistent ball, the opposite of what happens with shorter, stronger synthetic fibres that hold pills in place once they've formed. So a linen fabric with a lower headline rub count than a comparable velvet may still look visibly tidier for longer, simply because it isn't accumulating the same surface pilling — a good example of why the abrasion number and the pilling grade need to be read together, not the abrasion number alone.
How does faux leather perform for abrasion resistance, and can it pill?
Faux leather can't pill, full stop — pilling requires loose textile fibres to tangle together, and a PU or PVC-coated fabric has no fibre surface at all. That's the cleanest of the three comparisons.
Abrasion is more nuanced than the headline number suggests. BS EN ISO 12947-2 explicitly excludes coated fabrics — the standard states it "is not applicable to coated fabrics (including laminated fabrics)" and directs coated materials to ISO 5470 instead, which uses a similar Martindale-type rub apparatus but under a protocol built for rubber- and plastics-coated fabrics rather than woven or knitted textiles. In practice, many suppliers still describe faux leather informally as having a "Martindale rating," and the figures are usually high — commonly 50,000 to 100,000-plus — because there's no fibre pile to wear through. But a rub count alone doesn't capture faux leather's real failure mode: surface cracking or peeling at fold lines, most often the hinge edge and the front seat crease, where the coating flexes repeatedly rather than simply abrading flat. A high number is a reasonable indicator of general wear resistance, but it isn't a guarantee against cracking at a fold.
Velvet vs linen vs faux leather: quick comparison
| Property | Velvet | Linen | Faux leather |
|---|---|---|---|
| Test standard | BS EN ISO 12947 | BS EN ISO 12947 | BS EN ISO 5470 (coated fabric) |
| Typical Martindale range | 15,000–30,000 standard; 50,000–100,000+ performance grades | 15,000–25,000 | Commonly 50,000–100,000+ |
| Pilling tendency (ISO 12945-2) | Highest of the three — dense pile | Lowest of the three — long fibres shed rather than ball | None — no fibre surface |
| Typical wear pattern | Pile flattening, then pilling at contact points | Gradual thinning or light surface fuzz at high-friction points | Cracking or peeling at fold lines (hinge, seat crease) |
| Best suited to | Light-to-general domestic use | Light-to-general domestic use | General-to-heavy domestic use |
What Martindale rating should you look for, based on how the bench will be used?
Rather than matching fabric to room — covered in our guide to what an ottoman storage bench is and how to choose one — it's worth matching fabric to how hard the bench will actually work, since that's what the Martindale figure is actually measuring:
- Occasional or guest-room use (rarely sat on): Light Domestic, 10,000–15,000, is generally adequate.
- Everyday household use (used daily, one or two people): General Domestic, 15,000–25,000, is the sensible baseline.
- Hallway, family, or pet-household use (constant contact, coats, bags, claws): Heavy Duty, 25,000–30,000 or above, is worth specifying.
Worth knowing: Martindale only measures abrasion. It says nothing about lightfastness, stain resistance, or fire safety. UK furniture must separately meet the ignition-resistance tests in the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire Safety) Regulations 1988, and a fabric's colourfastness to sunlight is tested and rated completely separately (see stopping a velvet ottoman fading in sunlight) — a high Martindale rating on its own doesn't cover either of those.
Frequently asked questions
Is a higher Martindale rating always better for an ottoman bench?
Not necessarily beyond a certain point. Domestic furniture rarely needs more than 30,000–40,000 Martindale; figures well above that mainly matter for commercial and contract specification and add little practical benefit at home. Pilling resistance, colour, and comfort matter just as much for how the bench actually looks day to day, so the rub count shouldn't be the only factor in the decision.
Can pilling on a velvet ottoman bench be fixed?
Yes. Pilling is normal wear rather than a fault, and it's usually removed in minutes with a fabric shaver or de-piller. It's a different issue from pile crushing — the flattened, shiny patches that develop under sustained weight — which needs steam and a soft brush rather than shaving. See removing crushed pile from a velvet ottoman for that method.
Does faux leather have a Martindale rating?
Suppliers often still describe faux leather in "Martindale" cycles, but because it's a coated fabric, the technically correct standard is BS EN ISO 5470 rather than the ISO 12947 series used for woven and knitted textiles like velvet and linen. Figures are usually high, but the real weak point for faux leather is cracking or peeling at fold lines, which a rub count on its own doesn't capture.
What Martindale rating should I look for on a hallway or family storage bench?
Aim for at least 25,000 Martindale — the "Heavy Duty" domestic banding — for a hallway bench or a household with children or pets. For an everyday bench used more lightly elsewhere in the home, 15,000 ("General Domestic") is a reasonable minimum.
For general upkeep once your bench is in place, see how to clean and maintain an ottoman storage bench. Browse the velvet ottoman storage bench collection to compare finishes.